Note: You can use SQL database only with Enterprise Edition. SBE is only supported with using the embedded database. For more information, please review the System Requirements document: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH163806

It gives more levarage to the Symantec customers to choose what he wants. In many cases it's seen that customer used to required only SEP setup and unnecssarily he had to download entire zip file which is around 1.5 GB in size.

Once the download finishes successfully, extract the contents of the compressed file to a location of your choice.

Navigate to the extracted files, then enter the SEPM folder and double-click on setup.exe:

Setup Initialization Process will start:

Welcome Page:

License Agreement page:

Destination Folder. Click "Change" to install to a different folder:

Change Destination Folder if necessary:

Ready to Install:

Setup Progress:

Once Setup Complete successfully,Ready for configuring the management server:

New Splash Screen in SEP 12.1

Select "Custom Configuration":

Select the required option depending upon number of clients in your network:

Select "Install my first site" because this is a fresh installation; the second and third options are for adding SEPMs to existing sites for failover, load balancing, or replication:

Change any port number that is in use already:

Select "Microsoft SQL Server" for database type:

Select "Create a new database":

Select desired database authentication method:

Either option you will have to select, we will check use an existing database:

When SQL Express is installed and the instance name defaults to SQLEXPRESS, the database server name will be SERVERNAME\SQLEXPRESS. The port may also be different, on our server it was in the 49000 range.